This invention relates to commercial cakes as sold in bakeries, supermarkets, and like retail outlets in the United States. Such cake products include specifically the yellow cakes (wholesale and high quality), the white cakes, and dark colored cakes such as devil's food cake. Because of the formula balancing rules that have been established by the baking industry, standardized formulas for these cakes are available and are set forth in the following table:
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ "STANDARDIZED" CAKE FORMULAS.sup.1,2 Wholesale High Quality Devil's Yellow Yellow White Food ______________________________________ Flour 26.0% 24.0% 24.0% 20.0% Liquid (Water, milk, eggs) 33.6 33.7 33.2 35.4 Leavening 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.2 (Baking powder) Milk solids 2.6 -- -- -- Salt, flavor To taste To taste To taste to Taste Color -- -- -- 4.0 Shortening 8.0 10.0 11.0 11.1 Sugar 28.5 31.0 30.5 28.3 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% ______________________________________ Authority: .sup.1 "The Baker's Digest" , W. H. Lawson, September 1970, pages 36-38 (formulas, page 38). .sup.2 "Baking Science & Technology" , E. J. Pyler, Vol. II, 1973, Siebel Pub. Co., Ill., pages 971-2.
While virtually every authority will preface a review of a "standard" formulation by saying that minor modifications or variations in the ingredients or proportions are to be expected (depending on the flour used, type of cakes desired and other factors), the formulations are surprisingly similar as shown by the foregoing, particularly with respect to the two key ingredients: sugar and fat. Thus, the weight proportion of sugar in the standard formuation for yellow, white or deveil's food cake is within the range from 24 to 32%, whereas the proportion of fat or shortening is within the range from 8 to 13%. These standardized proportions are to be expected in view of certain basic rules concerning the relationship of ingredients to each other (formula balance) which are still in use today. Thus, most cakes currently made by wholesale bakers have a sugar flour ratio of the order of 115:100 whereas the accepted levels for high quality white and yellow cakes range only slightly higher, at about 120-140 parts sugar to 100 parts flour. Similar relationships exist with respect, for example, the weight of the shortening to the weight of the eggs, the weight of the liquids with respect to the weight of the sugar, and so on. The foregoing "standardized" formulas are consistent with these rules and generally reflect standards existing in the bakery trade with respect to the indicated cake products.
In these standard formulations, "sugar" is used in the usual sense of sucrose or dextrose (corn sugar) whereas the term "liquid" is intended to refer to the liquid ingredients, including water and/or milk, eggs, the water content of liquid sugars and the like. For various reasons as noted below, standardized cake formulations are not found to include lactose.
Commercial lactose, or milk sugar, is typically made by concentrating liquid whey from cheese-making to about 50% solids and then cooling to produce lactose crystals. The crystals are collected by centrifuging, washed, redissolved in water and then dried, or recrystalized to increase purity and dried. The resulting lactose is much less soluble than sucrose or dextrose, and is known to be inherently lacking in plasticity in dough formulations. Thus the use of lactose in cakes, either as a sweetener or as pure carbohydrate, has been greatly limited.
It is worthy of note that lactose does find its way into some cakes, indirectly. Thus, non-fat milk solids (50% lactose) and dried whey (75% lactose) are well known ingredients which find frequent use in certain cake mixes. However, bakers have had to overcome known volume depressing effects of these ingredients. Cereal chemists have evidence that lactose is a principal factor responsible for this volume depressing effect.sup.3, possibly due to its low plasticity noted above. Consequently, lactose would seem to be very undesirable as a baking ingredient, particularly in standard cake formulas of the type described. FNT 3. See "Use of Whey in Baking", by E. J. Guy, Proceedings of Whey Products Conference, June 14-15, 1972, U.S. Department of Agriculture.